You may have seen this announcement, if you read your Rootsweb Review. I'm really excited about the improvements coming up. They are so close I can almost TASTE it! In fact, the boards were up briefly tonight, and I've bookmarked them all. It's gonna be great! > IMPORTANT MESSAGE BOARDS IMPROVEMENTS > You have probably heard about the new message board changes coming about in the next days and weeks. Ancestry.com and RootsWeb.com will be releasing a new integrated message board system that is a combination of two powerful message board systems, GenConnect and FamilyHistory.com. Users will be able to take advantage of a much larger community in which to share experience, tips, and genealogical information. > > Users will be able to access these new message boards on either RootsWeb.com or Ancestry.com, and message board access will remain free on both sites. (Any FamilyHistory.com bookmarks will be redirected to the message boards at Ancestry.com) I'm really looking forward to the next generation of our boards. Roll-out will be in the next few days, and for now, no one is able to post to the GenConnect boards. They are still *searchable,* however. > Overall, we expect the new system to be more stable and have more features. Improvements include the following: > > --- The new message boards database will be by far the largest collection of such messages on the Internet. In fact, the FamilyHistory and RootsWeb messages are extremely complimentary. The majority of the messages on FamilyHistory are surname-based, while RootsWeb's strength is in the locality and topic areas. Not only will the new combination enjoy a larger set of data, but users will have access to a much larger audience. This is going to help us all. More messages, more visitors, more connections made. > --- The new message boards can now handle attachments to e-mail messages in the form of uploaded pictures (scanned documents, family photos, etc.) and GEDCOM files. This will be GREAT! Gravestone images with obituaries, the scanned Bible records with the transcriptions, GEDCOMS with the Biographies. This will be SUPER!!! > --- Users will be able to view the e-mail address of message authors and be able to respond to them easily and privately. However, the message boards cannot be "crawled" by unscrupulous third parties to gather e-mail addresses for spam mailings. The boards already are protected, and I'm glad that will be continuing. > --- Search functionality will be improved compared to either the RootsWeb or FamilyHistory systems. Search hits will be ranked by relevance and wildcard searches are available. Better searching is *always* an improvement. > --- The hardware infrastructure supporting the new message boards is faster, can handle larger traffic loads, and is more stable. The new system is also less expensive over time and easier to maintain. The servers that GC were on were notoriously unreliable. New servers are good news. > The boards, however, will definitely be different. We hope that we have preserved the important features and conveniences from FamilyHistory.com as well as added a few new bells and whistles. It is important to us that these new boards continue to serve your needs. We will all have an adjustment period to go through. Please write me privately with feedback, both positive and negative. Let's keep the discussion about functionality and suggestions for improvements direct to the various board admins, and keep list discussion to genealogy and family history. Valorie Zimmerman Black Diamond, Washington USA Cowen, Cowin, Cahoon, Calhoon, Calhoun list and board admin, Colquhoun board admin